A Teacher's Story (1)

I recently sampled a group of teachers enrolled in my graduate programs at the University of Colorado-Denver, soliciting some of their best-ever ideas for teaching with document cameras. Here is a two-part postings showing how one Colorado teacher used the classroom visualizer in fourteen different ways in a single lesson. The italics are mine.

Part 1. Imagine for a moment a math lesson on measurement. Jen Miller, a magnificent third grade teacher working in a Colorado elementary school, reads aloud the book, “How Big is a Foot”, showing the students the pictures under the document camera to ensure that all students can see the illustrations. As she reads, she quickly “captures” a few of the book illustrations to use the following day when reviewing the lesson, before moving forward to cover new content.

After reading, she shows the students the size of the King’s foot (12 inches) by displaying the ruler under the document camera. She continues to display other different measurement tools (string, protractor, etc.) under the display, for the students to see, relating them back to the book as she goes.

Next, she suggests to the students a few different examples of items in the room to measure and ask them to write down which measuring tool would make the most sense to use. She asks several students to come up to show their answers under the document camera. She places a graphic organizer under the doc cam for the final question, asking the students to come up and put their initials in the box of the correct tool to use. She then shows the class results under the doc cam for the entire class to see.

To find out what happens next in Ms. Miller's creative classroom, return for our next post, in two weeks.